Thackeray became a contributor to Punch within the first year of its existence. John Leech, who was one of the earliest contribu tors, had been at Charterhouse with Thackeray and the two men were friends through life. He made his first hit with Diary, begun in November 1845, and may be said to have estab lished his reputation by the Snob Papers (1846), now known as The Book of Snobs. "Punch's Prize Novelists," another series which Thackeray contributed to the paper, contain some bril liant parodies of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Lever, Disraeli and others. Owing to differences in political opinion, his connection with Punch ended in 1851. Minor but admirable works of the same period are Legend of the Rhine (a burlesque of Dumas's Othon l'Archer), in George Cruikshank's Table Book, edited by Gilbert A Beckett, Cox's Diary (on which has been founded a well-known Dutch comedy, Janus Tulp), and The Fatal Boots. Rebecca and Rowena towers over every other burlesque of the kind. Its taste, its wit, its pathos, its humour, are unmatchable; and it contains some fine songs of a particular sort. In 1846 was published, by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, the first of twenty four numbers of Vanity Fair, the work which placed Thackeray as a novelist of the first rank. It was completed in 1848, when Thackeray was thirty-seven years old. The charge of cynicism Thackeray has himself met at the end of the eighth chapter, in a passage which is the best commentary on the author's method.
Another accusation brought against the book was that the colours were laid on too thick, in the sense that the villains were too villainous, the good people too goody-goody, the best answer to that can be found by anyone who chooses to read the woxk with care. Osborne is meant to be a poor enough creature, and one whose poorness of character is developed as he allows bad in fluences to tell upon his vanity and folly. The good in him comes out in the beautiful passage describing his farewell to Amelia on the eve of Waterloo, in which passage may be also found a sufficient answer to the statement that Amelia is insipid and uninteresting. So with the companion picture of Rawdon Crawley's farewell to Becky Sharp: who that reads it can resist sympathy, in spite of Rawdon's vices and shady shifts for a living, with his simple bravery and devotion to his wife? As for Becky, there is certainly not much to be said in her defence. We know that she thought she would have found it easy to be good if she had been rich, and we know also what happened when Rawdon surprised her alone with Lord Steyne. How "she ad mired her husband, strong, brave and victorious." This admiration is the capital touch in a scene as powerful as any Thackeray ever wrote. The supreme art in the treatment of the character of the brilliant adventuress that Becky was, makes the reader feel her attractiveness, though he knows her evil qualities.
Vanity Fair was followed by Pendennis, Esmond and The New comes, which appeared respectively in 1850, 1852 and Esmond is perhaps Thackeray's capital work. It is undoubtedly one of the greatest of English historical novels. The insolent beauty Beatrix reappears in the Virginians as the jaded, worldly, and not unkindly Baroness.
In 185r Thackeray had written The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, delivered as a series of lectures at Willis's Rooms in the same year, and re-delivered in the United States in 1852 and 1853, as was afterwards the series called The Four Georges. In 1854 was published that delightful burlesque, The
Rose and the Ring. In 1857 Thackeray stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for Oxford and in the same year appeared the first number of The Virginians, a sequel to Esmond. The last number came out in 1859, and in the same year Thackeray under took the editorship of the Cornhill Magazine. This was a task which, as readers of his Roundabout Paper "Thorns in the Cush ion" will remember, the kindliness and sensitiveness of his dis position made irksome to him, and he resigned the editorship in April 1862, though he continued to write for the magazine until he died. In the Cornhill appeared Lovel the Widower, previously written, with different names for some of the personages, in dramatic form; The Adventures of Philip (1861-62); the Round about Papers, some of his best essays; and (186o-63) the story, unhappily never finished, called Denis Duval. Among the Round about Papers is one differing in form from the rest, called "The Notch on the Axe—a Story a la Mode," an almost perfect speci men of the author's genius for burlesque story-telling. The Ad ventures of Philip is in the nature of a sequel to A Shabby Genteel Story, contains scenes which rank with Thackeray's best work; there are fine sketches of journalistic, artistic and diplomatic life, but Philip himself is impossible; the character is not drawn at all. Denis Duval, which reached only three numbers, promised to be a first-rate work in the Esmond manner. The author died while it was in progress, on Dec. 24, 1863. He was buried in Kensal Green, and a bust by Marochetti was put up to his memory in Westminster Abbey.
The grace and the apparent spontaneity of Thackeray's verses are beyond question. Some of the more serious efforts, such as "The Chronicle of the Drum" (1841), are full of power and instinct with true poetic feeling. Both the half-humorous, half pathetic ballads and the wholly extravagant ones must be classed with the best work in that kind ; and the translations from Beranger are as good as verse translations can be, for Thackeray had the true poetic instinct.
The books of reference that can be best commended to the student of Thackeray's life and works are Merivale and Marzials' Life of Thackeray (1891) ; R. H. Shepherd, Bibliography of Thackeray (188o); C. P. Johnson, The Early Writings of Thackeray (1888) ; Charles Whibley's Thackeray (1905) , a critical commentary ; the edition of Thackeray's Works with biographical introductions (1897-190o) , by his daughter, Lady Ritchie; the Life of Thackeray ("English Men of Letters Series," 1899) by Anthony Trollope. Trollope showed in his own Autobiography far more appreciation of Thackeray's great quali ties than is apparent in the Life. Letters of W. M. Thackeray and Edward Fitz-gerald (1913) ; Rt. Hon. Sir A. C. Lyall, Studies in Liter ature and History (1915) ; Trowbridge Hall, Illustrated Catalogue of ist Editions (New York 1921) ; E. B. Chancellor, The London of Thackeray (1923) ; Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Letters, with 42 additional letters of W. M. Thackeray (1924), ed. by her daughter, H. Ritchie.